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Tuesday, 14 December 2010

With these cookies intended as centrepiece of my cookie goody bags, I had grand plans and pipe dreams of decorating them magnificently. They would be so beautiful that people would refuse to eat them because they would be quite simply, miniature, edible, works of art greatness! Yup, when I dream, I dream big!

But by the time these cookies had cooled enough to be frosted; I
had been baking for almost eight hours and was exhausted. So I resorted to part
dipping them in coloured Royal Icing; which was so half heartedly put together
that it was too watery.

Oh well, thanks to a great recipe (which I've adapted very slightly) fromAnnie's Eats,
the cookies tasted so great that it didn't matter too much that they weren't
perfectly decorated. They’re soft but biscuity with a delicate almond flavour
that had a few of my friends describing them as marzipan cookies. Just so
you're still slightly enthused by mine, please don't look too closely at hers,
they're only, oh, about a hundred times better decorated than mine :)

I would suggest trying not rolling the dough as thin as the
recipe requires. I've heard it said that slightly thicker cookies have a little
something going for them. Note that if you make slightly thicker cookies, it will
affect the yield slightly and perhaps also the baking time.

These don't have to be decorated. They're just as tasty plain.
Or you could dust them with of icing sugar.

Monday, 6 December 2010

Every year I say I'll celebrate
Thanksgiving. Every year, that last week in November rolls round (very quickly!)
and I think of all the cooking it will involve and I think to myself,
"Next year. Definitely".Every year, I say I'll run a
marathon. The last couple of years I've run a half marathon and as I cross the
finish line and I feel like I've literally run every single step my body is
capable of running, it hits me that a marathon would mean doing that 2 hours 21
minutes all over again (but slower) and I think to myself, "Next year.
Definitely".

Every year I think to myself
that I'll be little miss domestic goddess and make home-made Christmas treats and
deliver them round all my friends enjoying the oohing and aaahing that would
inevitably follow (They definitely ooh and ahh when I imagine it). Chunks of
Christmas cake, pretty bags of white chocolate fudge, intricately decorated
sugar cookies; there is no end to the goodies I’ll make in these fantasies.

This year, Christmas has come
around really quickly! I would put money on the fact that somebody is playing
games with a ginormous calendar up in the sky! I thought about my Christmas
goodie bag fantasy, and I thought ... Bring it on!! Yup, I actually did it! I
decided to make a variety of Christmas cookies; which is either really brave or
really foolish considering I think I might be genetically incapable of baking a
good cookie. I'm going with brave! But I did it. It did take up my entire Saturday,
and I was only able to listen to X-Factor, but I ended up with 4 different
types of perfectly edible, no, make that friggin’ amazing cookies! Even if I do
say so myself.

Please note that I haven't
delivered said cookie goodie bags yet so if you haven't received yours yet,
don't shower my blog with abuse, just be patient, it’s probably winging its way
to you right now. Unless of course I don't know you and then it’s safe to say
it is never coming ;p

1 - Whisk together the flour, cocoa and baking soda in a
small bowl; set aside.

2 - Beat the butter
on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla
extract and beat for 2 minutes more.

3 - With the mixer off, add the dry ingredients. Turn the
mixer on and off low speed (pulse) for a second or two about 5 times so that
the flour mixture gets incorporated. Then mix on low speed for about 30
seconds, just until the flour disappears into the dough (the dough will look
crumbly).

4 - Turn the dough out onto a work surface and divide it
in two. Shape each half into a 9-inch log. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and
refrigerate for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated up to 3 days
or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you don’t need to
defrost before baking – just slice the logs into cookies and baking the cookies
1 minute longer.)5 - Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 170
degrees C/ Gas Mark 3. Line two baking trays with grease proof paper.

6 - Using a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds
that are ½-inch thick. Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1
inch between them. Sprinkle a small amount of extra salt on top of each round.

7 - Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes –
they won’t look done, and won’t be firm, but that’s how they should be.
Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they
are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room
temperature.Store the cookies in an
airtight container at room temperature.

Friday, 26 November 2010

Confession time! I confess so much on this blog perhaps I should
have named it 'Confessions of a cake-aholic'? Ah well, as usual, I come up with
my best ideas (and comebacks) much too late.

Back to my confession. While I LOVE chocolate, I'm not that keen
on chocolate cake - it's just too chocolatey. If my mum is reading this, I know
she's shouting at the computer screen 'There's no such thing as too chocolatey!'.
Well mum, I think there is - chocolate is nice in small amounts but chocolate
cake is just too much, too intense ... too everything.

So when I arranged to have friends round for a tea party -
Whoever invented afternoon tea by the way is a complete genius! An entire
eating occasion based on baked wonderfulness and where the closest thing
resembling food is a sandwich ... that right there is my idea of heaven - it
seemed like the perfect occasion to try out a new, somewhat unusual recipe and
as the resulting cake would be chocolate, it also meant I could have one small
piece and get rid of the rest of it.

Luckily for my friends, this cake was good. Actually, that is a
gross understatement; it was incredible! It's my new favourite chocolate
cake ever and probably the only chocolate cake I'll ever make after this. And
best of all, it's pretty easy to make!

Mini confession: once the batter has been transferred to the
cake tin, I use my fingers in the only way God could possibly have intended
them to be used to lick the bowl clean. At this point, I could taste the
Guinness slightly but once it was baked, you couldn't taste the Guinness at
all. What it did was intensify the chocolate flavour and make the cake really
moist. Did I mention it was amazing??

My cake is a bit flat as I used a bigger cake tin that was
recommended. And the frosting doesn't need to be piped on; I just got a bit
excited with my new piping bags and nozzle :D

1 - Preheat the
oven to 180°C. Butter and line a 23cm spring form tin.

2 - Pour the
Guinness into a large wide saucepan, and heat until the butter has melted, at
which time you should stir in the chocolate, cocoa and sugar.

3 - Beat the
yoghurt with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the chocolatey, beery pan.4 - Finally
whisk in the flour and bicarbonate of soda.

5 - Pour the
cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.

Leave to cool
completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.

6 - To make the
frosting lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar
and then beat them both together.7 - Separately
whip the cream until it just begins to thicken but still holds it shape.

8 - Pour the
cream to the cream cheese mix and beat again until combined and reaches a
spreadable consistency.

Tuesday, 16 November 2010

On Saturday morning I went for a
cupcake decorating class atThe Make
Lounge. It was a two and a half hour class and apart from the fact
that I was excited about cake decorating, it just feltreallygood to be doing something creative! I have recently had the same conversation with different friends about the fact that we use our creativity so rarely that it feels like that part of brain is dead. It made me realise that what I love so much about baking and decorating cakes; and particularly cupcakes, is that I can be creative.

That evening I went over to a friend's house for the first in our series
(friendly; not the TV show) of 'Come Dine with Me' - all in all, it was a
pretty perfect day :D

Anyway, back to the cupcake
decorating course! It was in a nice bright studio, and I think there were 10
people on the course that morning. The room was set up like so...

And each seat around the table
had a set of equipment; piping bags, spatulas, rolling pin, nozzles and most
importantly 14 cupcakes between two people! I know you can do the math (and
it's pretty simple math so if you can't do it,we, I mean you, have a problem
:p) but I'll help out anyway. That's 7 each! At the end, we got a 6-cupcake box
to take our cupcakes home, (again more math) leaving 1 for us to eat! Yipppee!

Our instructor Louise makeshuge
cake sculptures-
anyone watch 'Cake Boss' or 'Ace of Cakes’? Yup those kinds of cakes.
Through a couple of group demonstrations followed up by her walking round and
helping, I learnt how to make this messy swirl that I've always admired in some
cupcake chains. I also learnt to make marzipan roses!!! Apologies for the
blurry photos but you have to admit; my roses are pretty amazing huh? And to
think they began life as a slab of off-white marzipan!

We learnt to pipe roses (again
something I have admired on other cupcakes and never realised how easy they
were to do), pipe using two different colours simultaneously ...

and finally, we
got to play around with glitter and these stamp thingies to turn our cupcakes
from merely pretty to these-are-so-beautiful-I-can't-bear-for-them-to-be-eaten
:D

I would totally recommend this
course to anyone who is interested in cupcake decorating!

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

I seem to be turning my blog into a bit of a confessional
- it's just as well not too many people read it! Seeherefor my addiction
admission, andherefor my geek declaration.
As three is my lucky number, I thought "why not make it a hat trick?",
after all, third time's the charm ;p So here's another confession ... wait for
it ... okay, here goes:

While in life generally, I'm more of a delayed
gratification kind of gal, when it comes to food, I'm pretty greedy. I want
everything I like, all together, and I want it now!! Don't judge me!

So words like ‘Oreo cupcake’ are music to my ears.
It can only be a WIN-WIN ... I love Oreo cookies and I love cake; it's a
no-brainer really.

However I have had some disappointing experiences
with Oreo cupcakes at a London
cupcakery. Biscuits are dry so with the wrong recipe, you can end up with a
rather dry cake with dry bits in it making for a pretty dry experience. Oreos
are also very sweet so when you combine them with a really sweet buttercream -
it can make for a rather sickingly sweet cake and trust me, there is such a
thing as too sweet.

This is where my newest baking blog crush (yeah
yeah I know I'm turning into a bit of a chef whore ;p) comes in. I first
happened across this recipe onAnnie's Eatsand since then, I've pretty muchstalkedahem, I mean researched her archives
and come up with no less than 15 recipes that I want to try!

This recipe is genius. First of all it has half
an Oreo (the half with the cream) in the bottom of the cupcake liner, chunks of
Oreos all the way through and it is topped with half an Oreo. It also has a
cream cheese frosting which balances out the sweetness of the cake and biscuits
really well. Everybody LOVED these
cookies so try them if you're trying to impress! It's quite a dense cake rather
than light and fluffy but that works really well and the textures of the cake
with the cookie at the bottom and all the way through are pretty amazing! My
friend described it as a "fusion of textures" and another friend
promptly demanded the recipe to make them the very next weekend.

I just realised that this recipe is originally from another one of my blog baking idols; Beantown Baker! Sorry Jen for mis-assigning credit for this. And I just have to say that every time I have made these, I have received compliments like 'The best cupcake I have ever eaten', 'divine' etc. Every. Single. Time. So thank you for an incredible recipe!

A couple
of notes:

- The recipe calls for 3 egg whites and
when I asked Annie why not use whole eggs; she wasn't sure but thought it might
have something to do with keeping the cake a nice white colour. I suspect the
addition of whole eggs rather than just the whites would make the cake lighter
and fluffier so it's worth a try. I'm definitely making these again so I'll let
you know how it goes using whole eggs.

- I had some Golden Oreos left over from my
last visit to the States so I mixed them in with the regular Oreos but I think
these would taste really amazing made entirely of golden Oreos so you lucky
people who live in the US, give them a go with Golden Oreos. And make sure you
let me know how they turn out!!

1 - Preheat the oven to 180˚ C/Gas Mark 4. Line
the wells of two cupcake pans with 24 paper liners. Place an Oreo halve
in the bottom of each liner, cream side up.

2 - In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking
powder and salt; stir together with a fork to blend and set aside.

3 - In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the
butter and sugar and beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy,
about 2 minutes.

4 - Blend in the egg whites one at a time, beating
well after each addition.

5 - Blend in the vanilla extract.

6 - With the mixer on low speed, beat in half of
the dry ingredients just until incorporated. Add the milk and beat just
until combined, then mix in the remaining dry ingredients.

7 - Gently fold in the chopped Oreos with a rubber
spatula until evenly incorporated, being careful not to over-mix.

8 - Evenly divide the batter between the prepared
cupcake liners. Bake for 18-20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through
baking, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

9 - Allow to cool in the pans 5-10 minutes, then
transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the frosting

1 - Combine the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an
electric mixer and beat on medium-high speed until smooth, about 1 minute.

2 - Blend in the vanilla extract. Beat in the
confectioners’ sugar until incorporated and smooth, 1-2 minutes.

3 - Add the heavy cream to the bowl and beat on medium-low
speed just until incorporated, then increase the speed to medium-high and whip
for 4 minutes until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as
needed.

Frost the cooled cupcakes
as desired. Sprinkle with Oreo crumbs and garnish with Oreo halves.

Tuesday, 2 November 2010

In baking, as in life, you often get out what you put in. May we
take a moment to acknowledge how wise that last sentence sounded? Baking is
turning me into a right old philosopher! (See Mama? There are some advantages
to baking :D)

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, you get what you put in. There are
exceptions to the rule. Like banana bread, and .... well, banana bread. Oh, and
brownies! I am not saying you have to spend an entire day slaving over your
oven with a list of ingredients as long as the Great Wall
of China. All I’m saying is that when picking a recipe, don't go
for the one that is simplest because it probably won't be the best.

As usual, in a very long winded way, I finally reach my point.
This recipe jumped out at me because it is pretty simple to make and despite
the thought of chocolate sheet cake not particularly appealing to me, I thought
it would be nice to have a nice chocolatey recipe - where I'm guaranteed to
have all the ingredients in my cupboard - on hand for those lazy weekends when
I want some home baked goodness. Plus it's a Pioneer Woman recipe and her
recipes are decadent if anything! So I made it. And I wasn't impressed. For me,
it tasted like a faux brownie. You know how sometimes you're in some generic
cafe and they have these huge slabs of brownies, dark and inviting and practically
speaking to you. You consider that you’re on a diet and you really shouldn’t
and then finally, after mentally beating yourself up, you give in and have one.
And after all that it’s extremely underwhelming? Well that's how I felt with
this chocolate sheet cake. Plus I thought the icing was too sweet.

However, a couple of friends tried this and they both really
liked it. One of them had warned me that she wasn't in the mood for cake so
would hang on to hers till later. She opened it in front of me, “just to taste”,
and standing there, devoured the whole thing. And she's not a dessert person.
She thought it was simple and chocolatey but not too intense. Different strokes
for different folks and all that. Perhaps I just expected too much.

Anyway, if I haven't put you off after that review, here's the
recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman’s recipe. Till next time folks!

Friday, 29 October 2010

From The Pioneer Woman's website - Due to a broken laptop, I lost my step-by-step photos :(

My name is Vickii and I am a
dessert-aholic! If any of you just thought "no sh*t Sherlock", you
should be ashamed for even thinking in such language! I think I hide it
well. Anyway, even a dessert-aholic (it's
an actual condition, look it up) like me has some sweet things that they don't
like. For example:

oI HATE Turkish Delight. I don't understand how people can
like it AT ALL!

oAnything liquorish or Aniseed flavoured is a no-no - apart
from Sambuca and that's only because I like shots and now that I can no longer
drink Tequila (a long story featuring ATL and Patron), it's the only shot I can
drink. But Sambuca is not a dessert so it doesn't count.

oI'm also not the biggest fan of Panna cotta. In my opinion
it needs to make up its mind whether it is a mousse or a jelly - how can I
possibly like a dessert that is so indecisive?

… UNTIL my new-ish Sardinian flatmate
made a creamy, delicately flavoured, light yet satisfying dessert one Saturday
evening - wow! It was Tiramisu. I made a U-Turn then and there on my opinion of
it. It was a bit liquidy so you had to spoon tablespoons of left over liquid
once you dished a piece. She said it was a mistake but I love it liquidy – it
was perfect!

She’s
promised to teach me how to make it - although she insists on fixing the
mistake so there isn't too much liquid, which I'm not too happy about, but beggars
can't be choosers aye? But until then - when I will share the recipe, I promise
- I decided to try The Pioneer
Woman'sTiramisu recipe. The Pioneer Woman; Ree, is by the way, my
new cookery crush. I'm sort of cheating on Nigella with her - although Nigella
is my one true food love! Check out Ree’srecipe index- she has some amazing food on there!

I
did omit the alcohol though as I realised that's what I like the least about
Tiramisu. Although I would like to try it with Amaretto as I love Amaretto!
This made a lovely Tiramisu! Not as great as Alessia's (my housemate), in my
opinion, but better than all the others I have ever tasted.

Ingredients

5 whole Egg Yolks

¼ cups Plus 4 Tablespoons Sugar,
Divided

¾ cups Marsala Wine, Divided

1 cup Whipping or Double Cream

1 pound Mascarpone Cheese, Softened
(room Temperature)

1-½ cup Brewed Espresso Or VERY Strong
Coffee

1 Tablespoon Vanilla

1-½ packs of Lady/Sponge Fingers – or
as many as it takes to line your dish and layer it twice more.

Cocoa Powder, For Dusting

1 - In a saucepan, bring some water to a boil, then reduce
heat to a simmer. Find a mixing bowl that will fit over the top of the pan, but
not sink all the way in. (A poor man’s double boiler!)

2 - Put 5 egg yolks into the mixing bowl. Add ¼ cup sugar
and whisk until pale yellow in colour. Place the mixing bowl on the saucepan
with the simmering water.

3 - Add 1/2 cup Marsala
wine gradually, whisking constantly as you do. Cook over the simmering water,
scraping the sides and bottom occasionally for 5 minutes. Cover with plastic
wrap and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes, or until cool.

10 - Spoon 1/2 to 1 tablespoon of the coffee mixture over
each ladyfinger (keep it under 1 tablespoon per cookie and you’ll be fine).

11 - Plop 1/3 of the cold cream/mascarpone/zabaglione mixture
on top and spread it into a layer.

12 - Sprinkle a thin layer of cocoa powder. Repeat the
process two more times.

13 - Cover and refrigerate for a few hours before serving.
This allows for more moisture to soften the cookies and the whole mixture to
meld together. To serve, spoon out helpings onto individual plates.

Note: tiramisu does not last beyond 24 to 36 hours, as
everything eventually starts to break down and become soupy.

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

My name is Vickii and I am a baking geek! I like hearing and
reading about different cakes, I love cake innovation! So when I heard about
this bright red cake called red velvet that was taking LA by storm about 4
years ago, I had to try it! I found an incredible recipe then and it still
stands as the best red velvet cake recipe I know! This is mainly due to the
frosting which as well as the standard cream cheese also contains mascarpone
cheese and double cream. I promise to share it with you when next I make it.

Since then, red velvet has taken everywhere by storm and in my
opinion is now usually over-hyped - especially since most places make a pretty
average version; as long as it's a red cake with a basic cream cheese frosting,
they're happy. Well, I'm not! There's a particular London chain bakery where I tried their red
velvet cupcakes about three years ago and I thought they were great. However,
I'm sure they've changed the recipe since to make mass producing them cheaper
and they've lost so much of the wonderful flavour in the process! Oh well,
they've also lost me as a customer so the joke is on them as they’ve lost my
custom from all of 10 cupcakes I’d normally buy from them in a year! Yup, 10 a
year! Read that and weep sub-par red velvet cupcake producers!! ;p

Anyway, talking about average cupcakes, I recently (well, when I
say recently, I mean over 2 months ago - yikes!) made some red velvet
cupcakes as part of the batch of 60 cupcakes I made for a friend's engagement party. And I have to admit grudgingly that … ummm, well … they were
not my best. In my defence, I never knowingly underbake but I didn't want to
risk using my layer cake recipe in cupcake format in case it didn’t work and I
had 30 bad cupcakes on my hand. So I decided to usethis cupcake recipealong with the cream cheese frosting
below from my precious Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook. The cake was good and
everybody seemed happy but I know they were not as great as my original recipe.
It was dryer and more cake-ey (not usually a bad thing, I know!). However,
after having a very small bite of the Brown Betty red velvet cake at my
friend's wedding, even my original recipe has some large boots to fill! It was
so moist, it was almost wet! Apparently that is real Southern red velvet cake!
If anyone has a recipe that creates cake that sounds just like that, please,
please, pass it on!

I used the Crabapple frosting because it is thicker than my
original frosting so makes for prettier looking cupcakes.

Other cakes on my so-unusual-sounding-I-can't-wait-to-try-them
list include 7-up cake (another Southern American cake) and Guinness cake
(Irish??). I will let you know how I get on with these and my quest to bake the
perfect red velvet cake!

Crabapple Bakery cream
cheese frosting

125g softened unsalted butter

400g softened cream cheese

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I use about 3 teaspoons)

6 cups icing sugar (I'd probably stop at 5 but start checking
for the consistency you want from about 4)

Makes 4 cups of frosting -
enough for 24 cupcakes

Keeps 4 Days

1 - Cream the butter for 1-2 minutes

2 - Add the cream cheese, vanilla and half of the sifted icing
sugar and beat for 3 minutes or until mixture is light and fluffy

3 - Gradually add remaining icing sugar and beat until the
mixture is light and fluffy and of spreadable consistency

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

The fourth stop on the tour was 4th Street Cookie. First of all, can I just
say Reading Terminal Market! Wow! Love it! If I lived in Philadelphia, I would undoubtedly
spend a ridiculously large percentage of my salary buying fresh produce, shell
fish, meat and unusual ingredients to prepare lovely meals, and ready prepared
food and cake when I'm feeling lazy!

If I'm being honest (and isn't that the whole point after all?),
I wasn't so impressed with 4th
Street Cookie. It was a pretty basic counter and
their cookies looked ... well ... normal. I'm not sure what I was
expecting - actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly what I was expecting.
Ginormous cookies that I would ooh and ahh over, beating myself up that I'd
never be able to make cookies as nice!Cookies aren't my fortedon't cha know?

I bought a white chocolate chip cookie to take away and
was pleasantly surprised when I eventually tried it. It wasn't the best cookie
in the world - I much preferBen’s Cookiesin London - but it was everything a cookie
should be. Nothing more. But no less either.

Flying Monkey
- Reading Terminal Market, 12th and Arch

Now this was exciting! They had lots of cupcakes, as well
as brownies and other baked goodies! Mmmmmm, baked goodies .... sorry, what was
I saying? Oh, yes, cupcakes! They had cool colours and lots of exciting
flavours; lots! Crème brulee, pistachio, pina colada, baileys, bubblegum, black
velvet, rose, chai ... and the list goes on. I wanted to try everything! But
you know, the real world being real and all, I can't get everything I want so I
settled on the pina colada, my partner in crime had the crème brulee, and I got
the pistachio for my pistachio obsessed other partner in crime. My pina colada
was good! The cake itself was really good - in Lara's opinion the best we'd
tried - but my heart still lies with Brown Betty's pound cake. And the icing
was nice but not too sweet. Lara's crème brulee icing didn't really taste like crème
brulee; it had more of a burnt caramel taste to it. And when we eventually got
round to eating Doyin's pistachio cupcake (I bought it for her, it was only
right that she halved it with me :D), that also tasted nothing like pistachio
either. So my general impression is nice cake, lots of cool flavours but the
icing leaves a lot to be desired. I admire their ambition though!

Final *sob* stop - Serendipity -
225 East 60th Street between 2nd and 3rd AvenuesWhile we were in NY, we were staying in Queens. Shopping there during the day and then coming into the city at night for dinner and drinks with friends Trouble and First Lady. That schedule, though fun, did not leave much time for dessert crawling, despite my best intentions. I didn't get to walk across the BrooklynBridge or do the Sex and the City tour either :( Anyway, we did manage to make it to Serendipity, which was in Sex and the City incidentally. It was very quirky and their frozen hot chocolates - although not really frozen, just really cold and thick – were lovely! The cheesecake was alright but I really wish I had gone to Juniors for cheesecake. And Magnolia bakery for cupcakes. And Make My Cake for cake. And Crumbs for cake. And ... well, you get the picture. I guess I have to save something for next time right? And I did have Coldstone ice cream!